The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

[Martyn Miles]

Because of my age, I inevitably prefer popular music from the Sixties. I keep an open mind, though.
I like Adele, but cannot stand Ed Sheeran.
When it comes to the way it’s produced and sounds I hold an interest as I do some simple recording and
run a PA system, which gives me an insight into the final sound produced.

 

[JensenHealey]

I am an old git - but have teenage girls who invade my car radio from time to time. They know well what I think of most (not all!) current music. Worst is the male singers like Drake and similar - mono-syllabic, mono-tonal drony dross. But there is som egood stuff around too

 

[Millennium]

This kind of makes my point as for me the 1980s was stuff released on the likes of Factory Records, Rough Trade, SST, ZTT, Mute, 4AD, Some Bizarre, Warp, Paisley Park etc etc (easier than typing a huge list of bands). FWIW the only artist in your list I like at all other than Peaches (I have the first album on vinyl) is Michael Jackson, though then only really Off The Wall and Thriller.

PS If your university played Celine Dion I’d argue you went to the wrong one!

I have nowt read the other replies. I went to York Uni (the fancy one lol). They had a great DnB scene but it wasn't uni locals it was actually mainly others who were able to entertain. Evils!
That Celine Dion song was mainly played at the local cheesy sh**ty club. I don't recall if it was played at a uni club night. Probably in a uni pub or bar or as musac.

So, hahaha
aumnoa

 

[Cav]

if you watch the video, he explains the various criteria used in a few studies. one example is a decline in timbral complexity.

Which is subjective - as are all defintions of quality in any art form.

 

[vuk]

Which is subjective - as are all defintions of quality in any art form.

yes, it's ultimately subjective, but when you have multiple indicators all pointing in the same direction, the so-called confluence of evidence is as good as it gets. to get around the issue altogether, we could say, instead of contemporary pop being "worse", that it is more simplistic, fomulaic, tonally compressed, etc.

 

[Cav]

All music, generally speaking, is formulaic - the concerto, the sonata, the symphony. Counting the notes proves little. Any music can be recorded with tinal compression.

What about the "confluence of evidence" from those who consume recorded music? Pop music is the most consumed on a daily basis than any other.

 

[lordsummit]

All music, generally speaking, is formulaic - the concerto, the sonata, the symphony. Counting the notes proves little. Any music can be recorded with tinal compression.

What about the "confluence of evidence" from those who consume recorded music? Pop music is the most consumed on a daily basis than any other.

This is simply factually inaccurate. Whilst Western Art Music may conform to certain accepted structures, the battle to expand them and escape the tonal structures is what has fuelled the development of said music. The reason Mozart sounds different to Brahms and Brahms sounds different to Hindemith is the rejection of formulas. Schubert changing tonality in 3rds instead of the dominant/sub-dominant/relative minor. Mozart writing the last movement of the Jupiter symphony using five interlocking themes and making the coda an exercise in glorious counterpoint, Mahler adding singers, the list is endless. I’m afraid that argument doesn’t hold water. It’s a bit like saying nearly all dogs have four legs so they’re all the same.

 

[matt j]

Let's not rule out that it was easier to be original and create new stuff 50 years ago, I'm not saying it's all been done already but it must be really hard these days trying to create something new and simultaneously making it popular to a mass audience.

I also think that music is just not such a big deal to younger people these days as it used to be. It's more about background noise and having something on the headphones whilst in the gym for most young folk, not something they'd sit down with of an evening and listen to for a few hours.

 

[Joe P]

Anna Kendrick nailed an aspect of some pop music that drives me nutz — that weird affected way of singing in teeny-bop pop.

https://www.metatube.com/en/videos/231875/SNL-Ariel-The-Little-Mermaid-Anna-Kendrick/

Jump to 1:10 if you're impatient.

Joe

 

[Tony L]

To add to what I wrote yesterday, which to my mind really nails most of this, it is also well worth asking the simple question ‘what is pop music’?

In the 50s through to 70s and even some of the 80s it was that which was not classical or jazz and was purchased from certain specific large or otherwise visible ‘chart return’ music shops on vinyl or cassette. This meant late-period Beatles, Stones, Cream, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, Bowie, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Sex Pistols, Gil Scott Heron, Run DMC, NWA, Kraftwerk, Donna Summer, Chic etc etc were all ‘pop’. Now each and every one exists in a separate genre outside of ‘pop’.

As an example one would certainly place post-Revolver Beatles, Hendrix, Dylan, Roxy Music etc etc in an outlier category the way say Radiohead, Flaming Lips, The National, Sufjan Stevens etc are today. A category which would have its own chart. They never were ‘pop’ in the slightest. The market just lacked the sophistication to place them elsewhere. As such comparing today’s ‘pop’, which is really children’s music, with the stuff in that category in the past is just an entirely flawed premise.

 

[DonQuixote99]

Pop means 'music of the widest popularity.' In their time the Beatles were pop as hell. Your modern outlier music is not.

A week after Sgt Pepper came out you could hear it on about any street in the world. And it was kids buying it, along with everyone else. And it was pop, but it wasn't children's music. That's sort of the point of this thread.

 

[darrenyeats]

The point of this thread is that the old people at the time thought it was just noise.

 

[Tony L]

Pop means 'music of the widest popularity.' In their time the Beatles were pop as hell. Your modern outlier music is not.

A week after Sgt Pepper came out you could hear it on about any street in the world. And it was kids buying it, along with everyone else. And it was pop, but it wasn't children's music. That's sort of the point of this thread.

Though much of that is the point I made yesterday about the massive shift in the whole way the music market worked then to now. Had The Beatles not had the huge corporate power of EMI behind them it is debatable they’d have ever made it out of the Cavern Club in Liverpool or playing seedy clubs in Hamburg, let alone have been able to spend months in the most expensive studio on the planet making a highly experimental album that was then marketed like a Hollywood blockbuster across the globe! Radiohead, Sufjan Stevens etc, whilst to my mind no less ‘clever’, harmonically/lyrically complex or whatever other gibberish was in that video exist by entirely different rules with next to no involvement of corporate major labels. The playing field is simply incomparable.

 

[DonQuixote99]

The point of this thread is that the old people at the time thought it was just noise.

Oh you started this thread then?

 

[DonQuixote99]

Though much of that is the point I made yesterday about the massive shift in the whole way the music market worked then to now. Had The Beatles not had the huge corporate power of EMI behind them it is debatable they’d have ever made it out of the Cavern Club in Liverpool or playing seedy clubs in Hamburg, let alone have been able to spend months in the most expensive studio on the planet making a highly experimental album that was then marketed like a Hollywood blockbuster across the globe! Radiohead, Sufjan Stevens etc, whilst to my mind no less ‘clever’, harmonically/lyrically complex or whatever other gibberish was in that video exist by entirely different rules with next to no involvement of corporate major labels. The playing field is simply incomparable.

True enough, but not really on the point I was making. However pop is made, whatever resources and backing and market conditions are required, it used to be made better. It has never been 'nothing but children's music,' and for a while there a great lot of it was much more than that.

 

[vuk]

Anna Kendrick nailed an aspect of some pop music that drives me nutz — that weird affected way of singing in teeny-bop pop.

https://www.metatube.com/en/videos/231875/SNL-Ariel-The-Little-Mermaid-Anna-Kendrick/

Jump to 1:10 if you're impatient.

Joe

joe.

on top of the singing affectation the dynamic range compression almost made my head explode. if we compare it to photo "curving' the line i straight and almost vertical. anything more and speakers will surely explode.

 

[vuk]

Pop means 'music of the widest popularity.' In their time the Beatles were pop as hell. Your modern outlier music is not.

some keep missing this simple point, though i suspect, deep down, they know better.

btw -- if you want to get really depressed, there was a time when benny goodman was a pop sensation.

 

[Bananahead]

if you watch the video, he explains the various criteria used in a few studies. one example is a decline in timbral complexity.

I think that it is worthwhile to have a glance at some of his other videos. For example

 

[Tony L]

some keep missing this simple point, though i suspect, deep down, they know better.

I do know better, hence my exlaning the reasons for the false perceptions upthread! To put it even more simply: the quality and diversity of ‘non-classical/jazz’ music (i.e. what was one called ‘pop’) remains to this day, in fact it is arguably more intelligent and certainly far more diverse, though the ownership, means of creation, production and marketing are now *entirely* different. This results in a more complex culture where all that is left in the now far more limited ‘pop’ charts and on ‘pop’ TV is a tiny subset of corporate manufactured or promoted music sold through a few specific channels. Everything else exists elsewhere. Everyone interested knows *exactly* where it exists, so ultimately it is an advantage as artists no longer need to find the backing of an EMI, George Martin or whatever to realise their creativity, nor do they need mainstream radio or TV shows to promote their wares. The overriding cultural narrative is lost due to vastly reduced corporate control and vastly increased artistic and genre diversity. This is good! I’m simply amazed it isn’t obvious to people!

 

[darrenyeats]

Spend an hour watching Walk Off The Earth covers on YouTube, this might put the quality of melodies, rhythms and constructions of "banal pop" in a fresh light. It's not all about the performance, you need to write a good song and it's obvious to me these are good songs!

Of course most chart music is forgettable! But there always was and there continues to be good music in the charts.